concrete

not just a mag, a way of life. a magazine proposed by Coyote in 1995, based on some earlier ideas, entirely
subverted by Cthulu and the Laughing Fool into a jumble of multimedia silliness and extravagance which turned into a tarpit-like muddle from which any and all productivity was doomed to fail.

This mixture is mixed, by hand for small amounts or in a cement mixer for larger quantities, and moistened with water until it is sludgy, and then poured into position.

When it dries it sets into a kind of artificialstone used to build just about anything from gutters to pots to paving stones to harbours to bridges to roadways to railways to foundations to tunnels to skyscrapers. For large projects, the wet concrete is poured over steel rods to make steel reinforced concrete.

Mortar, the stuff used to hold bricks together in construction is a similar mix, typically 6 parts sand to 2 parts cement to 1 part lime for a compound that is stickier, more elastic but not as strong as concrete.

A short history of concrete

Assyrians and Babylonians: Used clayEgyptians: Used a cement made from Lime and Gypsum1756: John Smeaton, a leading British engineer makes "the first modern concrete" by adding pebbles and powdered brick to his "hydraulic lime" cement.
1824: Joseph Aspdin, a British mason, invents and patents Portland cement, using a burned a mixture of ground limestone and clay.
1849: Joseph Monier, a gardener from Paris, invents reinforced concrete. He used it to make garden pots with an iron mesh covered in cement. In 1867 he received a patent on it, and in the same year showed it at the Paris Exposition, having realized the use in other kinds of construction.

Software

Using a meaning unrelated to rocks, but related to tangibility; in computer programming a Concrete class is sometimes used to refer to a class that can be instantiated, i.e. not an abstract class. A concrete type has a similar meaning.

Concrete is a creator-owned comic book character, the creation of writer/artist Paul Chadwick. Concrete has been regularly cited as one of the best non-mainstream super-hero/science fiction type comics out there, and one of its more vocal champions is Harlan Ellison, who has called it the best “being published today by anyone, anywhere.” Concrete has intermittently appeared since 1986, when it premiered in the black and white comics anthology Dark Horse Presents # 1. Many Concrete stories appeared in that anthology and he had his own 10 issue series from Dark Horse as well. These days, a color Concrete mini-series appears every year or so.

Paul Chadwick’s reputation in the comics industry rests solely on Concrete. He has done some work on minor mainstream comics and another creator-owned series, The World Below, which was unfortunately largely ignored. None of his other work approaches the level of quality of Concrete, and as Chadwick devotes much of his time to his work in the movie industry, it will probably be his legacy. "I will probably step away from it now and then to do a special project, but I fully plan on doing it into my seventies.”

Concrete is Ron Lithgow, a speechwriter for Senator Mark Douglas. Shortly after his divorce, Lithgow goes on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevadas with his friend Michael. There, they are kidnapped and placed into alien bodies. Lithgow escapes, but Michael does not, and the alien spacecraft departs with his body, never to return. The giant body of gray rock is incredibly strong with powerful vision, but he cannot taste, smell, or feel. He struggles with his clumsiness. Perhaps the most profound loss of all is that his body has no genitals.

The problem of how Concrete can live a public life is cleverly solved. The existence of aliens, of course, cannot be revealed to the general public. So the fiction that he was a terminally ill patient placed into an experimental cyborg body by the army is created. And the general public is bombarded by Concrete merchandise, Concrete commercials, and Concrete appearances on talk shows and sitcoms, so the public tires of him and ceases to ask troublesome questions. Chadwick’s companions are Dr. Maureen Vonnegut (no relation to the author), a government scientist assigned to monitor him, and Larry Munro, a graduate student in English who Lithgow hired to be his assistant.

But this is all background to the question that drives most of the stories: What do you do with your life when you are in a powerful body of gray rock? There are no super-villains or aliens to fight, just everyday obstacles to overcome, and the struggle to do good with his new gifts.

Concrete is opposed to a abstract. The names of individuals are concrete, those of classes abstract.
J. S. Mill.

Concrete terms, while they express the quality, do also express, or imply, or refer to, some subject to which it belongs.
I. Watts.

Concrete number, a number associated with, or applied to, a particular object, as three men, five days, etc., as distinguished from an abstract number, or one used without reference to a particular object. -- Concrete quantity, a physical object or a collection of such objects. Davies & Peck. -- Concrete science, a physical science, one having as its subject of knowledge concrete things instead of abstract laws. -- Concrete sound or movement of the voice, one which slides continuously up or down, as distinguished from a discrete movement, in which the voice leaps at once from one line of pitch to another.

To unite or coalesce, as separate particles, into a mass or solid body.

Applied to some substances, it is equivalent to indurate; as, metallic matter concretes into a hard body; applied to others, it is equivalent to congeal, thicken, inspissate, coagulate, as in the concretion of blood. "The blood of some who died of the plague could not be made to concrete."